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Book_■ X. 

Gopigkt'N?-_ 


COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



















WOMAN 

MORALITY 

AND 

BIRTH CONTROL 


By 


MARGARET SANGER 


Published by 

New York Women’s Publishing Co., Inc. 
104 5th Avenue, New York City 
19 22 














WOMAN -7IM¬ 
MORALITY 

AND 

BIRTH CONTROL 

By 

MARGARET SANGER 


Published by 

New York Women’s Publishing Co., Inc. 
104 5th Avenue, New York City 
1922 












Copyright 

by 

Margaret Sanger 

1922 


© Cl A660888 


APR -3 1922 


I 





i 

FOREWORD . 

The articles in the following pages were 
written for the Birth Control Review and 
published in various issues. There has 
been such a demand for these that I de- 

i 

cided to put them together in booklet form. 


—M. S. 









WOMAN, MORALITY AND 
BIRTH CONTROL 


T HROUGHOUT the ages, every attempt 
woman has made to strike off the 
shackles of slavery has been met with the 
argument 'that such an act would lower 
her moral standards. Suffrage was 
going to “break up the home.” Higher 
education would unfit her for motherhood, 
and co-education would surely result in 
making her immoral. Even today, in some 
of the more backward countries reading 
and writing are stoutly discouraged by the 
clerical powers, because “women may read 
about things they should not know.” 

We know that there never can be a free 
humanity until woman is freed from igno¬ 
rance, and we know, too, that woman can 
never call herself free until she is mistress 
of her own body. Just so long as man 
dictates and controls the standards of sex 
morality, just so long will man control the 
world. 


3 










4 


Woman, Morality 


Birth control is the first important step 
woman must take toward the goal of her 
freedom. It is the first step she must take 
to be man’s equal. It is the first step they 
must both take toward human emancipa¬ 
tion. 

The twentieth Century can make progress 
only by fighting the superstitions and pre¬ 
judices created in the Nineteenth Century— 
fighting them in the open with the public 
searchlight upon them. 

The first questions we must ask ourselves 
are: Are we satisfied with present day 
morality? Are we satisfied with the re¬ 
sults of present day standards of morality? 
Are these so satisfying that they need no 
improvement? 

• For fourteen years I worked as a nurse 
in the factory and tenement districts of New 
York City. Eight years ago I was called 
into a home where the father, a machinist 
by trade, was earning eighteen dollars a 
week. He was at that time the father of 
six living children, to all appearances a so¬ 
ber, serious and hard-working man. His 
wife, a woman in the thirties, toiled early 
and late helping him to keep the home to¬ 
gether and the little ones out of the sweat- 


and Birth Control 


5 


shops, for they were both anxious to give 
their children a little schooling. 

*Two years ago I came across this same 
family, and found that five more children 
had been added in the meantime to their 
household. The three youngest were con¬ 
sidered by medical authorities to be hope¬ 
lessly feeble-minded; two of the older girls 
were prostitutes; three of the boys were 
serving long term sentences in peniten¬ 
tiaries, while another of the children had 
been injured by a fall and so badly crippled 
that she will not be able to help herself for 
years to come. 

Out of this family of eleven children only 
two are now of any use to society, a little 
girl of seven, who stays at home and cares 
for the crippled sister during the day while 
the mother scrubs office floors, and a boy of 
nine who sells chewing gum after school 
hours at a subway exit. The father has 
become a hopeless drunkard, of whom the 
mother and children live in terror. 

This is but one illustration of the results 
of our present day morality. Here was 
an opportunity for society to develop and 
preserve six children for human service; 
but prudery and ignorance added five more 


♦This article was written in 1916. 













6 


Woman, Morality 


to this group, with the result that two out of 
eleven are left fit to struggle against pau¬ 
perism and charity. Will they succumb? 

Another case I should like to cite shows 
how shallow is the concern of society in 
regard to the over-crowded tenements, 
where thousands of little children occupy 
sleeping quarters with parents and board¬ 
ers whose every act is visible to all. 
Morality indeed! Society is much like the 
ostrich with its head in the sand. It will 
not look at facts and face the responsibility 
of its own stupidity. 

I recall the death-bed scene, when the 
patient, a woman of twenty-six, passed away 
during the birth of her seventh child. Five 
out of the seven were girls, the eldest being 
about ten years old. Upon the death of the 
woman, this girl began to assume the du¬ 
ties of her mother and continued to keep 
the four men roomers who had lodged in 
their home for years. A few years later, 
I found this girl suffering from the ravages 
of syphilis, although she had only just en¬ 
tered the period of puberty. She told me 
she could not remember when she had not 
dressed and undressed before the roomers, 
and on winter nights she often slept in their 


and Birth Control 


7 


beds. She was already old—old in igno¬ 
rance, in vulgarity, in degeneracy. 

Another womanhood blighted in the bud, 
battered by ignorance, another soul sunk 
in despair. 

These five girl-women did not ask society 
to fill their minds, as it was willing to do, 
with a useless knowledge of Greek, Latin or 
the Sciences. But they did need and un¬ 
consciously demand the knowledge of life, 
of hygiene and sex psychology which is so 
prudishly and shamefully denied them. No 
doubt these five sisters will soon represent 
the ruins of an ancient prejudice, and five 
more derelicts will be added to that par¬ 
ticular relic heap of humanity. 

Again, is there anything more sickening 
to truth than the attitude of society toward 
that catch phrase “Sacred Motherhood”? 
Take another illustration and lay bare the 
living facts and view them for a while. 

Two sisters lived in an upstate town, 
members of a large family, where the older 
daughters worked in factories, in order 
that the younger girls might have educa¬ 
tional advantages. The youngest fell in 
love with a good-for-nothing fellow, with 
the result that she had an illegal child. Dis- 





8 


Woman, Morality 


grace, ostracism and remorse drove her out 
into the world, and together with her baby 
she drifted from house to house in the ca¬ 
pacity of a servant, until finally the baby 
died, leaving the mother free to enter upon 
another vocation. During this time, how¬ 
ever, due to the condescending treatment 
accorded to her by the women who em¬ 
ployed her, she had become so accustomed 
to look upon herself as an outcast that soon, 
with other companions of her own frame of 
mind, she began trafficking ... on the 
streets of New York. 

Now, the second sister, a few years older, 
also fell in love with one of the “town 
heroes,” and came to grief; but owffig to 
the “disgrace” of the youngest sister and 
sympathy for the elder members of the 
family, who were completely anguish- 
stricken over this second mishap, the old 
family physician took her in charge and 
sent her to a place where an illegal opera¬ 
tion was performed upon her. She returned, 
a sadder but wiser girl, to her home, fin¬ 
ished the high school course, and several 
years later she became the principal of a 
school. 

Today she is one of the most respected 


and Birth Control 


9 

‘rJr 

57 

€ 

women in that county. She devotes her 
life outside school hours to a sympathetic 
understanding of the needs of young boys 
and girls, and her sordid early experience, 
put to good use, has helped many boys and 
girls to lead clean lives. 

These cases represent actual modem con¬ 
ditions. Our laws force women into celi- 

> 

bacy on the one hand, or abortion on the 
other. Both conditions are declared by 
eminent medical authorities to be injurious 
to health. The ever ascending standard 
and cost of living, combined widi the low 
wage of the young men of today, tend* 
toward the postponement of marriage. 

Has the knowledge of birth control, so 
carefully guarded and so secretly practiced 
by the women of the wealthy class—and so 
tenaciously withheld from the working 
women—brought them misery? Rather, 
has it not promoted greater happiness, 
greater freedom, greater prosperity and 
more harmony among them? The women 
who have this knowledge are the women 
who have been free to develop, free to en¬ 
joy in its best sense, and free to advance 
the interests of the community. And their 
men are those who motor, who sail yachts, 




10 


Woman, Morality 


who legislate, who lead and control. The 
men, women and children of this class do 
not form any part whatever in the social 
problems of our times. 

Had this class continued to reproduce in 
the prolific manner of the working people 
in the past twenty-five years, can human 
imagination picture what conditions would 
be today? 

All our problems are the result of over¬ 
breeding among the working class, and if 
morality is to mean anything at all to us, 
we must regard all changes which tend 
Cowaiu the uplift and survival of the hu¬ 
man race as moral. 

Knowledge of birth control is essentially 
moral. Its general, though prudent, prac¬ 
tice must lead to a higher individuality and 
ultimately to a cleaner race. 


WHEN SHOULD A WOMAN AVOID 
HAVING CHILDREN? 


I F ONE judges by the letters and personal 
inquiries that come to an advocate of 
Birth Control the one thing that women wish 
to know more than any other, is how to es¬ 
cape the burden of too frequent child bear¬ 
ing. Next to that they are interested in the 
question of when a woman should avoid 
having children. 

One who has examined the books bear¬ 
ing upon the latter subject is quickly 
brought to the conclusion that there has 
been a great amount of disagreement 
among so-called authorities in regard to 
this matter. Once it seemed that every one 
who discussed it, either from the stand¬ 
point of medicine, morals, social wel¬ 
fare or individual rights disagreed with 
everybody else who had attempted to give 
an answer. 

Within the past few years, however, 
medical and social science have made such 
strides in this direction that it is now com¬ 


il 


12 


Woman, Morality 


paratively easy to separate the worthwhile 
conclusions from those which are of doubt¬ 
ful value or plainly wortless. Those who 
have made a careful, scientific study of 
Birth Control are pretty well united upon 
the points which I shall set forth in this 
article. I do not give them as my own 
opinions so much as the result of investiga¬ 
tion by others, which I have proved correct 
by my own studies. 

There are many circumstances to be con¬ 
sidered before one attempts to advise a 
woman who asks when she sould avoid hav¬ 
ing children. When all is said and done, 
the answer is never the same in any two 
cases. There are certain things which the 
mother or prospective mother should know. 
Then she must decide for herself. 

(1) Generally speaking , no woman 
should bear a child before she is twenty-two 
years old. It is better that she should wait 
until she is at least twenty-five. Not only 
is it desirable from the mother’s viewpoint 
to postpone child bearing until she has at¬ 
tained a ripe physical and mental develop¬ 
ment, but it is all-important to the child. 
The best authorities agree that a child born 
when a woman is twenty-five or older has 


and Birth Control 


17 


overwork, lack of fresh air and lack of 
play, stunt both the mental and physical 
development of the child, which through 
the pressure of poverty at home, has been 
driven to coin its childhood into dollars. 

The working woman should have no 
1 more children while the profit system ex - 
* ists , for it dictates where you shall live, and 
what you and your children shall eat and 
wear. In the case of the majority of workers it 
dictates too little food, adulterated food, 
food of inferior quality, shocking living 
quarters^ exposure to disease and inade¬ 
quate medical attention. 

While there is a struggle between the 
forces of Poverty and Plenty the working 
woman should have no more children. 
Every child is likely to have to go into the 
mill or the factory and compete with its 
father and mother for its daily bread. 

The workers will win their fight for bet¬ 
ter conditions, only when they cease to pro¬ 
duce cheap labor for the labor market, and 
use Birth Control as the most immediate 
weapon for their emancipation. 

The mothers of workers have made hu¬ 
man life cheap with battalions of unwanted 
babies. As long as life is held thus cheap, 


18 


Woman, Morality 


society will continue to waste life prodigally 
in under-paid toil. It will not place a 
higher value upon the life and the health of 
the worker until the women of the working 
class make babies scarce. 

Do not be deceived. Your children are 
commodities—they are bought and sold in 
industry. And the price of infants like the 
price of everything else, goes up when the 
commodity grows scarce. 

The war has brought women into indus¬ 
try as never before. Poverty has driven 
them into the factory and the mill beside 
their fathers and brothers. It has taken 
their children with them. 

All of the creative energy of woman¬ 
hood, the maternal energy that is looked to 
for the renewal of the world, goes into a 
sordid, dead, unfeeling machine. That is 
society’s decision in the matter, and from 
it there is no appeal. But until Society per¬ 
mits woman to give to the bearing and rear¬ 
ing of children the maternal energy given 
her by Nature for that purpose, and so long 
as she must give it to a factory machine, 
she must for her own sake, for the sake of 
other workers, for the sake of the child, 
avoid bearing children. 


ARE BIRTH CONTROL METHODS 
INJURIOUS? 



DVOCATES of scientific Birth Control 


are sometimes met with the absurd 
statement that such methods are injurious 
to the health of the woman. It is even as¬ 
serted that they cause cancer and other dis¬ 
ease and that they bring about sterility. 

As applied to scientific Birth Control, 
these statements are both false and silly. In 
the light of the best authoritative informa¬ 
tion of the day, it can be unequivocally set 
down that modern Birth Control methods, 
properly employed, are not only not injuri¬ 
ous but are often positively beneficial to 
the woman’s health. The contrary is main¬ 
tained for the most part by those who are 
mentally honest but uninformed or by such 
as are altogether prejudiced. 

The clergy, bound to theological dog¬ 
mas are usually opposed to Birth Control 
methods and are only too ready to accept 
any bald statement levelled against them. 
A few physicians who are uninformed as to 


19 


20 


Woman, Morality 


modern means of Birth Control, still in¬ 
cline to the opinion that they are injurious, 
but these physicians have in mind the 
earlier, cruder means of preventing concep¬ 
tion. 

Some of the presons who maintain that 
preventive measures are injurious are so 
ignorant of the whole subject that they 
oppose abortion and call it Birth Control. 
Still others believe that harmful drugs are 
given internally as contraceptives. They, 
of course, confuse abortives with the means 
of preventing conception. Anyone who 
knows about Birth Control knows that it 
would do away with abortions which occur 
in appalling numbers in America every 
year. 

One commonly practiced metod of pre¬ 
venting conception is not only uncertain but 
beyond all doubt injurious to the woman’s 
health. This is the one which, because of 
the withholding of scientific information 
upon the subject^ is most commonly used. 
It was perhaps the earliest method known 
and was condemned by the wise men among 
the ancient Jews, being anathematized in 
the Bible in a very specific fashion. Mod¬ 
ern science sometimes calls it Onanism 


and Birth Control 


21 


from the name of the Biblical character 
who, we are told, was soundly punished for 
practising it. 

Until recent years it was supposed that 
this method was injurious to the man alone, 
but it has been discovered that the man in 
many cases seems to suffer no ill effects, 
while the woman’s health may actually be 
wrecked. 

Mantegazza believes that organic disease 
of the spinal cord may follow this practice. 
Hirt says that it may lead to neurasthenic 
disorders. Eulenberg is of much the same 
opinion. Valenta declares that it is one of 
the chief causes of chronic neuritis. Klein- 
wachter says that its harm to the system of 
the woman is by no means trivial. Still 
other great authorities who have pointed 
out the dangerous effects of the practice are 
Forel, Von Krafft-Ebing, Mensiga, Freud, 
Lowenfeld, Elischer and Ellis. 

“The lack of sexual satisfaction” says 
Kisch, as a sort of final word upon the sub¬ 
ject, “aggravates nervous and hysterical 
troubles in women, while suitably regulated 
intercourse with mutual satisfaction has an 
actively beneficial effect.” 

This method, then, in the opinion of the 


22 


Woman, Morality 


best informed of modem Birth Control 
advocates is unscientific, and dangerous. In 
the same class so far as being unscientific 
and injurious to the health is continence, 
much advocated but little practiced. This 
subject will be considered in a later article 
as will the question whether scientific Birth 
Control methods are certain. For the present 
it is enough to point out that scientific Birth 
Control methods exclude those which are 
either uncertain or injurious and that the 
advocates of Birth Control stand for the 
dissemination of knowledge which will per¬ 
mit mothers to limit their families in a 
sane, scientific, healthful way. 

The first essential in Birth Control is 
cleanliness and a sane observance of the 
principles of sex hygiene. These factors 
alone, taught to a woman, ignorant of the 
proper care of her physical functions until 
she sought knowledge of Birth Control, 
have restored many to health and have even 
disposed of many cases of sterility. It is 
the consensus of modem medical opinion 
not only that scientific Birth Control meth¬ 
ods are not harmful but in thousands of 
cases very beneficial to women suffering 


and Birth Control 


23 


from leucorrhea, inflamed cervix and other 
local disturbances. 

Among the objects of attacks by oppo¬ 
nents of Birth Control are cleansing, anti¬ 
septic solutions, and the like. It is to be 
remembered that these are not preventives 
and are not to be depended upon as such. 
As the term indicates, an antiseptic is de¬ 
signed for and serves certain medical pur¬ 
poses. Its function when applied to the 
reproductive organs of a woman is medi¬ 
cinal or hygienic, not the prevention of con¬ 
ception. Injuries to women from the use of 
antiseptics result from ignorance or lack 
of proper directions, as would be the result 
if such solutions were improperly applied 
to a wound or a surgical incision. 

Mechanical means have also been at¬ 
tacked, it being alleged that they cause 
cancer. Mechanical devices worn too con¬ 
stantly might produce irritation and cause 
trouble. A number of new devices have 
not yet been sufficiently tested to make an 
opinion as to their harmlessness possible at 
this time. And dangerous devices will be 
employed or devices misused as long as law 
and custom deny to woman knowledge of 
scientific means of determining the number 


24 


Woman, Morality 


of her children and the time of their birth. 

A glance at statistics disposes of the con¬ 
tention that Birth Control is responsible for 
the development of cancer. The implica¬ 
tion which the opponents of Birth Control 
seek to leave is that as the birth rate falls 
because of the use of contraceptives, the 
cancer rate rises. The contention is sheer 
nonsense. As far back as 1876 before the 
birth rate began to fall, the cancer rate be¬ 
gan to rise. Moreover, it is only among 
women who have reached the age of 65 that 
the increase is noted. It seems probable 
that women above 65 have not used contra¬ 
ceptives, as they were not so widely known 
during the child bearing days of women 
even now at that age. And if they had been 
known, it would seem very unlikely that a 
contraceptive used during their child-bear¬ 
ing period would cause cancer twenty years 
afterwards. Nor is this all—further light 
on this particular absurdity is that no in¬ 
crease in the rate of cancer affecting wom¬ 
en’s reproductive organs has been noted. 

Statistics of several countries throw still 
more light upon the preposterousness of the 
contention. Ireland has had an increasing 
cancer rate for twenty years with a constant 



and Birth Control 


25 


birth rate. Birth Control certainly is not 
responsible there. For five years of dimin¬ 
ishing birth rate due to the application of 
scientific Birth Control, Holland has shown 
also a decrease in the cancer rate. France, 
where Birth Control methods are in wide 
use, has a cancer mortality of only .76 per 
thousand, as against .95 in England and 
Wales, where the birth rate was 28 per 
thousand at that time. 

The assertion that Birth Control methods 
induce sterility is equally ridiculous. Many 
a woman, through the use of scientific con¬ 
traceptives has so toned up and strengthened 
her reproductive organs as to become cap¬ 
able of child bearing when she would other¬ 
wise have continued barren. Where sterility 
has been laid to contraceptives, physicians 
have discovered in nearly every case con¬ 
clusive proof of some condition in the 
woman or her husband which would have 
prevented children under any circum¬ 
stances. In thousands of cases where women 
have practised scientific Birth Control for 
five, ten and even twenty years, they have 
later borne strong, healthy children. Usu¬ 
ally the child is stronger in such cases be¬ 
cause the mother has waited until her health 


26 


Woman, Morality 


is at its best and the family means are such 
as to give the baby the proper care, before 
and after its birth. 

Dr. William J. Robinson’s challenge, is¬ 
sued several years ago, still remains un¬ 
answered. “I challenge” said he, “any 
physician and gynecologist to bring forth a 
single authenticated case in which disease 
or injury resulted from modern methods of 
prevention.” 

The gist of the matter then is this: scien¬ 
tific Birth Control is not only harmless 
but often a direct benefit to the health. 
Unscientific contraceptives are as likely to 
harm their users as any other unscientific 
thing applied to or used in connection with 
any part of the body. The plain conclusion 
is that with the health of the womanhood of 
America at stake, the mediaeval laws and 
customs which prevent full and free dis¬ 
semination of information concerning scien¬ 
tific Birth Control should be sent to the 
scrap heap along with rack, the thumb 
screws and other outworn instruments of 
torture. 

Besides being harmless and of positive 
benefit locally, scientific Birth Control 
methods have a much more important func- 


and Birth Control 


27 


tion for the improvement of the health of 
women. Anyone who knows anything at 
all about the subject knows that the health 
of a woman who is the mother of two or 
three children born several years apart is 
better than that of the mother of many chil¬ 
dren who follow each other at periods of a 
year or two. 

Nor is this all. The dread of undesired 
pregnancy is the nightmare of the lives of 
millions of women. To this cause and this 
cause alone is directly traceable the wreck¬ 
ing of the physical systems of many of 
them. Wille, a prominent authority quoted 
by Kisch, asserts that “the continued fear 
of pregnancy will in most cases do more 
injury to the feminine system than all the 
preventive measures in the world.” 

No woman can be healthy or strong who 
lives continuously in fear. Moreover, it is 
a fact universally recognized by physicians 
that to a nervously weak woman, preven¬ 
tive measures are necessary and a number 
of them are even helpful in regaining her 
health. 

The sooner these facts are understood, 
the sooner the laws against the spread of 
scientific Birth Control are abrogated and 



23 


Woman, Morality 


information concerning reliable and safe 
or beneficial contraceptives comes within 
the reach of all women, the quicker the 
question of the general health of women 
will be settled. 


WASTING OUR HUMAN RESOURCES 

O NE person in a half million, perhaps, 
has some sort of comprehension of 
the terrific rate at which we people of the 
United States are wasting our most pre¬ 
cious resources. These particular re¬ 
sources are not rich soils, forests, mineral 
deposits and the like—though we waste 
those prodigally, too—but the lives of the 
people. So-called “natural resources” are 
of no use until they have been developed 
by the genius and skill of human beings. 
It is in the strength, genius and skill of the 
people that the real wealth of a nation lies. 
These qualities reflect themselves in health, 
happiness and longevity, as well as in abil¬ 
ity to utilize natural resources, and these 
human assets we waste even more riotously 
than we do the assets which have come to 
us from the generous hands of Nature. 

The sum total of this waste, expressed in 
dollars, runs into incalculable billions, and 
this does not take into account the still more 

29 




30 


Woman, Morality 


terrible sum of misery brought about by 
our present callous and unreckoning policy. 

This condition will continue unabated 
while we have unlimited human resources 
to draw upon. We have wasted our “nat¬ 
ural wealth” like a nation of “drunken sail¬ 
ors” and are only now beginning to make 
the first faint effort to conserve it for sound 
uses. We will go on destroying our human 
wealth in the same fashion until we come to 
the realization that this wealth also has its 
limitations. We shall then, in the natural 
course of things, make better and higher 
use of this wealth and become a truly great 
people. But we will do this only when, 
through Birth Control, we have limited the 
supply of human beings and have brought 
to their senses those who are content now to 
waste human lives like chaff. 

In National Vitality , Its Wastes and Con¬ 
servation (Fisher), which is Senate Docu¬ 
ment No. 416 of the Sixty-first Congress, it 
is shown that “in the United States there are 
probably at all times about 3,000,000 per¬ 
sons seriously ill, and every day 1,700 un¬ 
necessary deaths.” It does not take long 
to discover that the loss of the productive 
time of these 3,000,000 sick persons, most 


and Birth Control 


31 


of whom, perhaps, are suffering from the 
diseases recognized as preventable, runs 
into the billions. And other sums of na¬ 
tional wealth, equally staggering, are lost 
through the unnecessary deaths. Seventeen 
deaths each minute, and even computing 
each life as worth only $1,700 to the coun¬ 
try, it means that the United States is wast¬ 
ing, in this item alone, nearly $3,- 
000,000,000 a year. The conservation of 
these lives and the proper utilization of 
these human resources would pay off our 
national debt within a few years. If we 
could also apply to the national debt the 
cost of caring for the unnecessarily sick, 
the United States could veiy shortly face 
the world without a cent of financial obli¬ 
gation. 

Of the 1,500,000 who die in the United 
States each year, according to the report 
quoted above, 150,000, or one in ten, are 
consumptives. One in six of the persons 
constantly and seriously ill are also suffer¬ 
ing from tuberculosis. Of the 20,000,000 
school children in the United States, one in 
ten will die of tuberculosis if they continue 
to die at the present rate, according to 
Lewis M. Terman, in a report of a medical 




32 Woman, Morality 

survey of the Public School System of 
Oregon. 

Yet the United States has never taken any 
serious measures to deal with the “white 
plague.” There are associations of indi¬ 
viduals who have been trying for years to 
arouse both the people and the governments 
of states and nation to this peril, but the 
terrible toll-taking goes on and the govern¬ 
ments, which have both the power and the 
resources to grapple with the problem, still 
neglect to attack it in an effective manner. 
Meanwhile, except for more or less pallia¬ 
tive state and local measures, the causes of 
tuberculosis are permitted to operate in 
full force. Save where labor unions have 
forced a shorter day, the hours of work 
continue to be so long as to exhaust com¬ 
pletely the worker and expose his system to 
the attacks of the ever present scourge. The 
Fisher report calls attention to this fact 
thus: “The present working day, from a 
physiological point of view, is too long, and 
keeps the majority of men and women in a 
continual state of over-fatigue.” 

An example of the extent to which indi¬ 
viduals are permitted for their private 
profiit to waste the vital resources of the na- 


and Birth Control 


33 


tion through maintaining breeding places 
for tuberculosis and other diseases is that 
to which attention is called by Lawrence 
Veiller, in Housing Reform, issued by the 
Charities Publishing Company, of New 
York, in 1911. Said he: “In the lower 
East Side of New York City dwell 500,000 
people, most of them immigrants. In 1910 
there were over 10,000 tenements with ‘air 
shafts,’ furnishing neither sunlight nor 
fresh air.” 

During the year ending June 30, 1914, 
for example, there were admitted to the 
United States 1,250,000 immigrants, most 
of whom were compelled to seek the com¬ 
pany of other millions who had come in 
other years, in communities where the hous¬ 
ing conditions were often but little better 
than those described. While such condi¬ 
tions exist, there is little hope for curtailing 
either the sickness rate or the death rate 
from tuberculosis in the United States. 

Neither can there be hope of curtailment 
while 2,500,000 children are permitted to 
give up their strength in factories, or men 
are compelled to kill the tissues of their 
lungs in ill ventilated factories or in the 


34 


Woman, Morality 


“dusty trades” where the protection afford¬ 
ed them is too often inadequate when such 
protection is afforded at all. 

Again, the tuberculosis toll cannot be re¬ 
duced to its lowest level until women are 
educated in the use of contraceptives. Preg¬ 
nancy renders tuberculosis fatal at certain 
stages and always aggravates it. Moreover, 
to continue to deny tubercular women the 
use of contraceptives means that every year 
there is a fresh crop of children coming in¬ 
to the world predisposed to the disease. 

Tuberculosis is not the only disease that 
reaps a rich harvest from the 2,500,000 
child laborers of the United States and from 
the weakly descendants of such laborers. 
The wearing out of the youthful body, the 
lack of recreation, the sapping of the basic 
forces of life, brings all manner of diseases 
to these unfortunates and if they are not 
claimed by death, they bring another crop 
of human weaklings who in their turn be¬ 
come victims. 

While the great war was in progress, the 
United States government took a most com¬ 
mendable step toward educating the people 
as to the danger of venereal disease. It 
was only a beginning, however, and if the 


and Birth Control 


35 


tremendous waste of vital wealth is to be 
completely checked, direct and vigorous 
eflorts must be made by state and federal 
agencies to arrest this scourge. Thus far, 
little appreciable has been done, except 
to patch up a few of the wrecks and send 
them forth, quite as likely as not, to com¬ 
municate their diseases to others. Bulletin 
No. 8, issued in June, 1915, from the office 
of the Surgeon General of the United States 
Army, showed that one man in five of the 
class from which men were drawn for the 
army suffered from syphilis. It was esti¬ 
mated by Fisher, in the report referred to, 
that there are 2,000,000 syphiletics in the 
United States. Most of these syphiletics 
are perfectly at liberty to infect others, if 
they are in the stage of the disease at which 
it is communicable. And the heritage of 
syphilis is the heritage of disease in mani¬ 
fold forms, ranging from insanity or total 
physical disability to general ill health. 
To say nothing of its huge total of physical 
and mental suffering, this disease alone 
represents financial loss to the nation of 
billions. 

One of the expedients which we must in¬ 
evitably adopt, in order that the problem of 


36 


Woman, Morality 


disease and its causes may be intelligently 
handled, is that of registering the sick. 
Physicians should be required to report all 
cases of serious illness each day. Simple 
records should be kept by departments of 
health. Thus, the health authorities would 
have at their disposition a mass of data that 
would enable them to plan and execute ef¬ 
fective campaigns for the elimination of 
disease. The individual, seeking to im¬ 
prove his own health, could consult these 
records which would cover his health his¬ 
tory from birth. 

According to R. C. Richards, chairman 
of the Central Safety Commission, and to 
the Final Report of the (Federal) Com¬ 
mittee on Industrial Relations, filed in 
1915, there are 35,000 killed each year in 
industrial accidents and 700,000 injured. 
Again the cost in misery, maintenance of 
the injured and loss to the nation reaches an 
appalling total. As H. H. Moore points out 
in The Youth and The Nation , “this means 
that every day in the United States nearly 
100 are killed in industry and nearly 2,000 
are injured—that one man is killed every 
fifteen minutes and one is injured every 
minute, twenty-four hours a day.” The ex- 



and Birth Control 


37 


planation is lack of proper safeguards—a 
greed for private profit that is each minute 
of the day robbing the nation of untold 
wealth. 

A still more far-reaching cause of loss of 
vital wealth than any yet mentioned is the 
waste of the masses, wiih its terrible harvest 
of unhappiness, disease and crime. King, 
in his Distribution of Wealth and Income, 
estimates that “over 50 per cent, of the 
wealth of the United States is owned by 
only two per cent, of the people.” Other 
authorities place the percentage of wealth 
owned by two per cent, of the people nearer 
to ninety per cent. Towne, in Social Prob¬ 
lems, says that there are probably 10,- 
000,000 persons in the United States living 
in poverty, while there are 5,000,000 de¬ 
pendent upon some form of public relief. 
Senator Borah, who is a Republican presi¬ 
dential possibility, and who spoke presum¬ 
ably from the best figures that could be 
compiled from information in the Census 
Bureau, said in a speech in the United States 
senate, August 24, 1917, that seventy per 
cent, of the families in the United States 
had an income of $1,000 a year or less and 



33 


Woman, Morality 


that a man supporting a family thus is an 
“industrial peon.” 

When these conditions prevail, what must 
be the terrible harvest of disease, crime, 
and weakened family stock, to produce 
through generations, more and more dis¬ 
ease and crime! This in itself is sufficient 
to wipe out a nation, but for fear these un¬ 
fortunates may limit their numbers, the 
governments of the nation and of most of 
the states use all possible means to stop the 
spread of Birth Control information, which 
would automatically check the multiplica¬ 
tion of this hardship and social loss. 

Only two of the factors of national loss 
and racial weakness springing out of a sys¬ 
tem that piles up huge fortunes on one hand 
and slums on the other, can be considered 
here. The census shows that in 1910 there 
were 100,000 children before juvenile 
courts, of which 14,000, mostly boys, were 
sent to so-called corrective institutions. It 
is well known that these boys are more than 
likely to go to penitentiaries or jail later 
on, owing to the influence surrounding them 
in reform schools. 

As shown by the National Child Labor 
Committee in Pamphlet 276, juvenile 


and Birth Control 


39 


delinquency increased thirty-four per cent, 
in Berlin during the war. It is hardly like¬ 
ly that the youth of the United States has 
shown a more favorable reaction, and the 
conditions as to juvenile delinquency are 
probably much worse than they were in 
1910. 

In 1910 also there were 11,498 persons 
in jails, penitentiaries and similar institu¬ 
tions in the United States—and most of 
these, as every student of sociology knows, 
come out stamped with disgrace and edu¬ 
cated in crime. 

The United States has yet to solve the 
problem of dealing with criminals and it 
has not yet learned either to stop creating 
them or to permit overburdened mothers to 
so limit their families that they will not 
bring into the world children who are in 
danger of becoming criminals. 

As early as 1890 there were in the United 
States 400,000 feeble minded persons, ac¬ 
cording to Goddard, in Feeble Mindedness; 
Its Causes and Consequence. This, taking 
into consideration the difficulty of detecting 
certain degrees of feeble mindedness, the 
tendency of families to conceal mental de¬ 
fects of their members, and the haphazard 



40 


Woman, Morality 


way in which statistics as to feeble minded 
are gathered, is probably a very low esti¬ 
mate, even for thirty years ago. Be that as 
it may, something of the appalling result of 
permitting the perpetuation of mentally 
feeble strains is shown by two classical ex¬ 
amples. When it is remembered that most 
of the feeble minded are free, either all 
their lives or at some time in their lives, to 
reproduce their kind, the situation takes on 
an ominousness that bespeaks prompt and 
effective action. 

Martin Kallikak, Jr., a feeble minded 
man, married Rhoda Zabeth, a normal 
woman, in 1803. They had ten children. 
From these children have come not less than 
470 descendants, and of the progeny of 
Martin Kallikak, Jr., there were 143 feeble 
minded, 36 illegitimate children, 33 sex¬ 
ually immoral persons, mostly prostitutes, 
24 confirmed alcoholics, 3 epileptics, 82 
who died in infancy, 3 proprietors of houses 
of ill fame and 3 criminals. Birth Control 
would have been an inestimable blessing 
there, and even more of a blessing to the 
Jukes family. 

There were 1,200 descendants of the 
founder of the Jukes clan in 75 years. Of 


and Birth Control 


41 


these, 130 were professional paupers, who 
in all spent 2,300 years in poorhouses, 50 
prostitutes, 7 murderers, 60 habitual thieves 
and 130 common criminals. One authority 
estimates that the loss of potential useful¬ 
ness, cost of prosecutions, expense of main¬ 
tenance and so on, for this family amounts 
to $1,300,000 in 75 years. 

There are thousands of Kallikaks and 
Jukeses at large in the United States to per¬ 
petuate their kind. Social agencies, physi¬ 
cians and departments of health have much 
to answer for when they fail to tell women 
of such families how to avoid having chil¬ 
dren. Unfortunately, however, they en¬ 
courage rather than discourage this multi¬ 
plication of misery and social loss through 
the reproduction of such defectives as these. 

There are several million women in in¬ 
dustry in the United States. There are 
other millions who work quite as hard or 
harder in their homes. These women are 
potential mothers, when not already actual¬ 
ly mothers, as is usually the case. Most of 
them are over-fatigued each day; most of 
them, perhaps, are already suffering from 
disease. They achieve little relief by their 
labors. As Nearing pointed out in Wages 


42 


Woman, Morality 


in the United States (1911), “probably 
two-fifths or more of the women wage earn¬ 
ers earn less than $6 a w^ek.” Wages are 
higher now, but in most cases, the rising 
prices have outstripped the increase. 

“It is now generally believed to be in ac¬ 
cordance with the laws of heriditary de¬ 
scent,” says Dr. Nathan Allen in the Law 
of Human Increase , “that the mother, not 
the father transmits the vitality and sta¬ 
mina, the strength of the physical system to 
the child. It becomes, then, vastly im¬ 
portant that the mother herself have the 
right kind of constitution.” The time is 
coming when we shall look back with horror 
upon our present policy of permitting the 
mother stamina to be killed by toil. We 
shall also wonder why we were blind 
enough to compel a mother incapable of 
transmitting strength to her children to 
bring such children into the world. 

Can the nation endure with these great 
factors of destruction and waste operating 
unchecked? It cannot. It will die as other 
nations have died and give place to more 
vigorous peoples. 

What is the remedy? Only this—to take 
our vast stock of human wealth in hand. 


and Birth Control 


43 


We have wasted it prodigally because we 
have had an unlimited supply. We have 
had more than we could use in the highest 
way and to the best advantage. We have 
been content with quantity, rather than 
quality. Let it be repeated that we shall 
continue this course until we resort to the 
limiting of our numbers—to Birth Control. 
When our numbers are cut down, these hu¬ 
man resources will appear to us in their 
true light—as the most precious of all our 
possessions. We shall guard the health 
and the happiness of each individual for 
the service that he can render to himself 
and to the whole of society. We shall make 
the best possible use of our material. We 
shall conserve human vitality for construc¬ 
tive social uses. We shall guard it more 
zealously than we now guard our gold. 





THE TRAGEDY OF THE ACCIDENTAL 

CHILD 


T HE first right of the child is to be 
wanted—to be desired with an intensity 
of love that gives it its title to being and 
joyful impulse of life. It should be wanted 
by both parents, but especially by the 
mother, who is to carry it, nourish it, and 
perhaps influence its life by her thoughts, 
her passions, her loves, her hates, her 
yearnings. 

We have observed how strongly children 
inherit their mother’s traits. Freud has 
told us of children so greatly influenced by 
their mothers as to be incapable of a mate 
love for anyone who does not resemble 
them. We are all familiar with the old 
wives’ tales of children “marked” because 
of a mother’s fright or other strong emotion, 
though we know little concerning the truth 
or falsity of this theory. Just as little do 
we know of the effect of fear, hate, yearn¬ 
ing or disgust in the mother at the time of 
conception. 


45 



46 


Woman, Morality 


Until scientists give years of careful 
study to the problem there will be no ac¬ 
curate information concerning it. At most 
we can only speculate upon it now. But 
since the life of the mother in its other 
phases, seems to affect the child so vitally, 
is it not probable that strong emotion at the 
time of conception, emotion which lingers 
and preys upon the mind of the mother in 
the months following, leaves its impress 
deeply if not indelibly upon the life of the 
child? And is it not time that scientists 
were making a direct and exhaustive study 
of a problem which may be fraught with so 
much of weal or woe for the race? 

My personal opinion, founded upon ob¬ 
servation as nurse and as a worker in the 
Birth Control movement, is that these emo¬ 
tions have a profound effect upon the child. 
I believe that the mother’s fear of preg¬ 
nancy has a most unhappy influence upon 
the life of her offspring. I believe 
that this fear and the unsuccessful prac¬ 
tice of coitus-interruptus are responsible for 
the timidity, the fretfulness and feebleness 
of many infants. 

Does it not stand to reason that no child 
can be what it should be, physically, men- 


and Birth Control 


47 


tally or spiritually, if it is conceived and 
carried by a mother to whom the embraces 
of her husband are repugnant? Can a mother 
who begins the creation of the little life in 
disgust and in disgust brings it to birth, be¬ 
queath to her baby the strength, the mental 
vigor or the disposition to happiness that is 
its inherent right? Can a mother whose 
very being is trembling in terrified sub¬ 
mission or quivering with hate at the time 
of conception and who for months there¬ 
after experiences a measure of these same 
emotions, bring her child forth as well 
equipped for the life struggle as it would 
otherwise have been? We know something 
of the effect of worry upon the mother’s 
milk. What may we not yet discover con¬ 
cerning the effect of worry or even stronger 
emotions upon her blood that for nine 
months flows through the very being of the 
child? 

Why the great numbers of feeble minded 
children? Why the hosts of infants born 
too feeble to withstand the difficulties of the 
first year of existence? Why the weakling 
manhood and womanhood, too timid to 
make effective protest against the great so- 


48 Woman, Moualit? 

cial wrongs and tyrannies which crush 
them? 

Science has answered these questions in 
part, but only in part. I do not believe that 
they will be conclusively answered until 
account is taken of the condition of the 
mind of the mother from the moment of 
the creative embrace until the child is born. 

The tragedy of the unwanted child—of 
the accidental child—only begins with 
whatever evil prenatal effect the emotional 
condition of the mother may have upon it. 
The right to be wanted is its first right but 
only the first of many that are ignored. 
Usually it suffers a further handicap by 
being carried by a mother who is physically 
ill or overworked. Fear of pregnancy is 
frequently inspired in the mind of the 
mother by the burden of too many children, 
or by want or by both. When it arrives, 
. the accidental child usually finds itself in 
the ranks of the millions of hungry and 
neglected infants. Often it is merely a can¬ 
didate for an item in the infant mortality 
statistics. We have before us always the 
horrible spectacle of hundreds of thousands 
of children dying miserably before they 
have lived twelve months, of other hundreds 



and Birth Control 


49 


of thousands dying just as miserably be¬ 
fore they reach the age of five. Worse still, 
is the lot of those other millions who after 
the age of five take their places among the 
toilers in mills and factories. 

What have we to offer those who do not 
go to the places of toil? To the majority of 
them, dwelling places too cluttered and 
crowded to be called homes. Schools that 
are crowded, in which “half time” is the 
sop of the state to the needs of childhood. 
Streets, filthy and crowded, as their play¬ 
grounds. And for some of them, finally, 
crowded jails and crowded institutions for 
the feeble minded. Crowded always, never 
breathing a free atmosphere and seldom a 
healthy one, from the beginning to the end 
of their monotonous lives, the hordes of 
unwanted children seldom have a chance to 
forget their unwanted state. 

We hear a good deal of sentimentality 
about unfailing mother love. We are told 
that even these unwanted children have 
that to protect them in their hard lots. But 
how few of the poorer women have the 
time and the strength to let mother love 
develop and express itself? We make a 
mistake in assuming that mothers are al- 


50 


Woman, Morality 


ways kind. We forget that under the stress 
of caring for many children, under the 
strain of helping to earn bread for hungry 
mouths and clothing for bodies clothed in 
rags, the strongest mother love may turn 
bitter and cruel. 

Is anything more horrible, more hopeless 
than the cruelty of a mother worried and 
tired to distraction? Oh, yes, there is much 
of it! If you doubt, go for a little while to 
live among the families whose mothers are 
over-burdened with children whose bodies 
and brains are worn threadbare with toil 
inside and outside the home. Unfortunately 
it is not only the hardhearted father of the 
story book who is cruel to the children— 
there is an appalling amount of cruelty 
from the mothers too. 

Which of us has not seen such cruelty, 
even in the streets? A case significant only 
because it is of frequent occurrence came 
to my attention a few months ago. A 
woman, evidently worn out by a day’s work, 
was wheeling a child in a baby buggy in 
Fourteenth street. Another child, about 
three years old, was trudging at her side, 
clinging heavily to her skirt. It had on 
badly shaped, cheap shoes, which probably 


and Birth Control 


51 


hurt its feet. It cried monotonously as it 
walked. The mother, apparently in frantic 
haste to reach home and prepare supper, 
doubtless for a husband and several other 
children—suddenly felt the drag of the 
weary, crying child. She struck it, first 
across one side of its little face and then 
the other. The tiny thing, surprised by the 
sudden attack, fell face downward upon the 
sidewalk. The furious, nerve-wracked 
mother, picked it up by the chin and struck 
it again and again on the back until a 
passer-by interfered. To a threat of arrest 
she retorted: “Oh, you shut up. This is 
my kid and I’ll lick it when I want to.” 

Do you hesitate to believe that this hap¬ 
pens often? It is common—as common, 
almost, as unwanted children. Of course, 
the mother later on rocks the child to sleep, 
covers its bruised face with kisses and seeks 
to wipe out the memory of the blows in a 
flood of remorse. But the scars are there, 
in the mind of the child, if not upon its 
body. Our militarists and ecclesiastics who 
shout for more and more children, who 
speak of them as “blessings,” shut their 
eyes tightly to this aspect of child life 
among the harassed poor. 


52 


Woman, Morality 


*In France, where a knowledge of con¬ 
traceptives is available to a large propor¬ 
tion of the working-class mothers, another 
typical scene is often witnessed. The 
mother arranges with her employer to leave 
her work for a time in order to fetch her 
child from school through the dangerous 
crossings and see it safely past the groups 
of older and rougher boys. Her attitude is 
almost invariably one of tenderness. The 
difference lies in the number of children. 
This French mother is not so badly over¬ 
burdened and her child is the more pre¬ 
cious to her because she has only the one, 
or two. 

The child’s right to a different lot from 
that depicted here is no longer questioned 
by thinking people. Many men and women 
are now working to alleviate the burdens 
and sorrows of the army of unwanted in¬ 
fants. The material side of the child’s life 
is bound to receive a certain amount of 
consideration now and in the future. Even 
the unwanted children are becoming fewer. 
And the medical profession, even the 
church, the imperialist, and the employed 
of “hands”—all those who are in need of 
cheap and ignorant humanity—will see to 

♦Since the war France prohibits all Birth Control knowledge. 




and Birth Control 


53 


it that childen have better shelter and get 
more of the food and clothing necessary to 
their existence. This they will do in the 
interest of their own institutions. 

Material rights of the child, however, are 
far more easy to enumerate and to obtain— 
when children are scarce—than are others 
of its rights which, for want of a better 
name, we may call spiritual. The awak¬ 
ening of the parents to these rights of the 
child, some of which have been indicated in 
the present article, must follow quickly 
upon the heels of its material rights. 

The eugenist very correctly contends that 
the parents should be in good health, men¬ 
tally and physically, when the child is con¬ 
ceived. They do well to insist that it is the 
first material right of the child to be “well 
born.” But have they taken into considera¬ 
tion all of the factors? 

From what deep spring of moral and 
spiritual weakness arises this huge stream 
of the cringing, the suppliant, the submis¬ 
sive? Whence come the natures of these 
millions of human beings who are but tim¬ 
orous pawns moved hither and thither upon 
the chess board of existence by a few pow¬ 
erful hands? 



54 


Woman, Morality 


Who can say that it is not because we 
come into life with the feeling, conscious or 
subconscious, that we are not wanted—that 
we are accidents? Who can say that it is 
not because we have graven upon our na¬ 
tures, the fear, the disgust, the loathing, the 
shrinking of our mothers? Men and women 
who have lived through the past four years, 
in any country on the globe, know what it 
is to be pawns. Not all the power of the 
church, not all the teachings of Christianity, 
not all our education, our theories of right 
and wrong, availed the weak wills of the 
millions of “accidents,” when a few tyrants 
plunged the civilized world into warfare. 

When we people the earth with men and 
women who are not “accidents,” these hu¬ 
man holocausts cannot occur. When we 
have men and women whose wills, whose 
moral and spiritual natures have not been 
marred by fear and hate from the moment 
of conception, war will be impossible. 

When we insist that conception be sur¬ 
rounded by its normal atmosphere of tri¬ 
umphant love and happiness, and thus in¬ 
fuse into the new life the spark of love, 
with its impulse to live, to love in its turn, 
to be strong, we shall have a new sort of 


and Birth Control 


55 


humanity. There will be no more “dumb, 
driven cattle” in the guise of men. When 
we can visualize out of the surging love and 
happiness of the creative act the strong, 
healthy, happy, mentally and spiritually 
vigorous child, we shall produce individ¬ 
uals with intellectual and spiritual gifts be¬ 
yond those of any race that has yet ap¬ 
peared upon earth. 

Our imaginations are as yet too weak, 
too uninformed, to portray to us the 
strength, the beauty and the wonder of a 
humanity yet to be brought into being— 
through children created in the flame of 
love. 


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